


Solitary Swim

by sam_fiction



Category: Free!, Free! Eternal Summer - Fandom, Free! Iwatobi Swim Club - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Depression, Emotional, Gen, Haru - Freeform, Swimming, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-31 00:39:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3957937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_fiction/pseuds/sam_fiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take a look inside Haru's mind as he swims alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitary Swim

Insert, twist, pull, push, rotate. Insert, twist, pull, push, rotate. Undulate. Undulate. Undulate while you insert, twist, pull, push, rotate. Glide up, surface, and breathe. Only for a moment. Fall back underneath. Insert, twist, pull, push, rotate until the pressure in your lungs builds to insurmountable levels.

In the meantime, let the water guide your hand. Don’t resist it. The instant you resist you’ll be drowning. Or standing. Standing in the middle of a pool with your head down and everyone’s eyes resting on you. Let the water guide you and you’ll never go astray again.

I hear their voices calling me somewhere above the water, even though I’m trying not to listen. They rest on top of the pool, their aftershocks bringing only the faintest, most muffled sounds to my ears. Makoto’s voice, the heat rolling upward from a steaming pot of oolong tea. Nagisa’s voice, a set of harmoniously discordant bells all jangling in unison. Rei’s voice, the smack, smack, smack of the cleaver that cuts the heads off of the mackerel in the market. Rin’s voice, missing.

The three of them beckon me from the depths, but I don’t think they would if they understood who I am. Why I can’t go back up. My heart pulls out through my chest, searching for them, attached to their fishing hook while they reel me in. But even still, I’m fighting to stay down here where the water floats between my fingers and asks nothing of me but to be.

I wonder sometimes why they want me here, with them. We have nothing in common but the water, yet they cling to me like I give them life when real livelihood is born of the sea. Their presence stifles me. It is a lifesaver forcing me upward from the place I need to be, forcing me down with reverse weight when all I want is to be free of gravity entirely. That’s why I turn to Rin. He grounds me so that I have something to float from.

Because Rin, he’s the closest to understanding what I feel, but even he doesn’t fully comprehend. In his heart, he’s for the team, for the team, for himself but for others, for his father, for his teammates beyond everything. But even when I’m for the team, am I for the team? They echo in my head, for the team, for the future. I scrawl it into the bricks and dirt with chalk and sticks, I’d dig it out of the ground with my fingernails if that would make the words speak truth, but I just can’t make the sentiment come alive. For the team, for the future. For the team, for the future. It sounds comforting but it’s all white noise the second my head surfaces from beneath the water because

I only swim free.

But if that’s true then why does every stroke make me feel like I’m trapped in a net of my own making, sinking further and further away from myself while I’m the one yanking the rope up from the water? It doesn’t make any sense anymore. I tell myself this is what I want, I put the pen to the blank paper and I scribble the words that say I want to be a professional swimmer. I convince myself I’ll have to struggle against the water just a little bit so that I’ll be allowed to feel it tug against the curve of my fingers one more time somewhere in the ever distant future. I race faceless swimmers with propeller arms, speedboat torsos, rudder legs, well-oiled machines trained to plow effortlessly through the water. But they don’t, even though they think that they do. And when I’m forced to see them for my own sake, I find myself wishing for times when

I only swim for me.

But I don’t know if that’s feasible anymore. It makes me feel horribly guilty to swim for myself now. If I were a better person, I would understand why I need to swim for Makoto, for Nagisa, for Rei, for Rin. And I do, but I don’t. The water is so crowded with them floating around inside of it, taking the waves from me and moving them around with their limbs, disturbing the stillness, agitating the water and creating endless streams of bubbles that pop and fizz at the surface, a million little mouths displaced from their home. And while they splash around for others, for happiness, for beauty, for competition

I swim because I have to.

The sensation of my corporeal being melding with the water, riding along in space and time, separate from this world and on to the next one, drifting into nonentity. That is why I must swim. Every day I die a thousand deaths when my hands slide into the water. And every night I die once more when they force me to leave my haven. I can’t expect them to understand this need, my need. I can’t expect them to understand why, but in my core where the yearning twists me like a knot that squeezes my blood both upward and downward I want them to know why it’s so essential that

I only swim.

Why I have no other aspirations in life, no goals, nothing pushing me forward but the flow at my back and my arms and legs letting me forward until I hit the wall with my flexed feet and push off in the direction that I came from, only to do it all again ten seconds later. It doesn’t make any sense, not in an emotional, physical, theoretical, or indulgent way. But no amount of rationality can change the way I dream day and night for the release of the water, the cradle of the current that my own body creates. In the solitary confinement of my mind, it’s no wonder

I swim.

I have to swim to get away. They’re trying to take my life from me before I can take it from myself, they’re damming me inside of these concrete walls and they won’t let me out as they take their giant pails and dip them inside of me and pour the water all over the deck and the grass in swelling deluges and

Swim.

Stop, Haru. And swim. Swim like your life depends on it. No. Swim like your friends’ lives depend on it. Fight the waves with your hands as you inch yourself closer to Makoto and drag him onto the sand, as you wipe the streaming droplets from his face and will the sea from his lungs even though you can’t hope to do anything for him. Hate the water. Despise the water. Loathe the water for taking him too fast too soon, for not taking you instead when all you really want is to sink to the bottom of the ocean and let the fish nibble at your toes while you turn from white to blue and let every orifice fill with water.

The air roars in my ears as I surface, and the illusion is scattered in the winds. As the night takes my hair and crystallizes it into ice and the water dribbles around my nose and down the slope of my lip line, I realize: I must face it.

I will never swim free again.

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to read more of this storyline, leave me a comment! Otherwise, I will be moving on to other scenarios.


End file.
